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In the last four months of the 2017-18 Broadway season, six productions of musicals (four new, two revivals) will open. Could we be seeing any of them contend at this year’s Tony Awards? (Read our preview of the nine plays coming to Broadway this spring.)

Below, we recap the plot of each musical as well as the awards history of its author, cast and creative types and the opening and (where applicable) closing dates.

“Escape to Margaritaville” (previews begin February 16; opens March 15)

In this new jukebox musical consisting of Jimmy Buffett songs, Tully, a part-time bartender, part-time singer, and full-time charmer thinks he’s got life all figured out. Until a beautiful career-minded tourist steals his heart and makes him question everything.

Olivia Newton-John has resumed her tour just three months after revealing she is facing breast cancer for the second time — and the star couldn’t be more grateful for the fans that stood by her.

“I’d like to thank any of you in the audience who have sent me cards and well wishes and prayers,” she told the crowd Thursday at her concert in Evansville, Indiana’s Victory Theatre — one of the rescheduled shows she had after postponing dates in May due to severe back pain she thought at the time was sciatica.

The 31-year-old singer and actress has been sharing a handful of sultry pictures taken by the Grease star to the popular social media site over the past week — including one of her posing on a bed posted Friday.

“Off to bed. How cute is this bed guys!!! Heavenly sheets! I love you all,” she wrote. “Loving sharing my special moments with my mom with you. Photographer: mommy. I adore you mom! Your the best photographer.”

Newton John revealed back in May that her breast cancer had returned, 25 years after it first appeared.

She has been receiving treatment at a healing center and sent daughter, Chloe, a video of some kittens playing in the grass.

“Such a good mamma,” Newton John can be heard saying as one cat starts grooming another.

“My mamma just sent me this,” Lattanzi captioned the video.

“She’s doing great! At a healing centre with lots of wild kittens! Just wanted to let you all know how well she’s doing. I love you guys. We love you!” she added, punctuating the post with the hashtags “#f**kcancer #fighter #winning and #ilovemymom.”

The AppleThe musical possesses a unique form of power rarely afforded to other Hollywood genres. In the words of film scholar Rick Altman, “The musical invites us to forget familiar notions of plot, psychological motivation, and causal relationships.” In contrast to other commercial genres, the musical is almost one-of-a-kind in its ability to arrest time and space, to suspend disbelief, to defy our lived understanding of human relationships and even the very conventions of filmgoing. In what other mainstream genre can fictional characters get away with looking into the camera lens so often? Dramatic logic is replaced in the Hollywood musical by spectacle and raw emotional appeal, with singing as the defining device for such purely cinematic priorities.But what happens to the musical when singing is taken out of it? This was the conundrum of the short-lived disco musical, a sub-genre that ended as soon as it began.Popular

People Magazine reported the 31-year-old took to Instagram on Wednesday after Olivia Newton-John announced she was putting her tour on hold to fight breast cancer.

“My mom and best friend is going to be fine!” wrote Lattanzi. “She will be using medicine that I often talk about. Cbd oil (cannabidiol oil)! And other natural healing remedies plus modern medicine to beat this.

Olivia Newton-John announced on Tuesday that she was reluctantly postponing her June tour dates after her breast cancer metastasized to the sacrum, but this isn't the first time she has fought the disease. The 68-year-old singer underwent a mastectomy after she was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992.

"Breast cancer is a very scary thing to go through and particularly in the first initial stages when you are first diagnosed because you don't know what that means. You don't know if it's spread anywhere else in your body. You don't know if you're gonna die. You don't know anything," she told Et during a sit-down interview in 2005. "And I guess the first few days after you go through shock and disbelief and common things that you go through, denial, there's a lot of fear."

Olivia Newton-John has been diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time, the singer’s team revealed in a Tuesday, May 30, statement on her official Facebook page.

“Olivia Newton-John is reluctantly postponing her June U.S. and Canadian concert tour dates. The back pain that initially caused her to postpone the first half of her concert tour, has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasized to the sacrum,” the statement reads. “In addition to natural wellness therapies, Olivia will complete a short course of photon radiation therapy and is confident she will be back later in the year, better than ever, to celebrate her shows.”

Grease and Xanadu star Olivia Newton-John has revealed that her breast cancer has returned and spread to her back, and she is “reluctantly” postponing her upcoming North America concert tour dates to focus on treatment. The back pain that initially caused her to postpone the first half of her concert tour has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasized to the sacrum, according to a statement posted on her Facebook page. She initially was treated for breast cancer…

Olivia Newton-John is postponing her June U.S. and Canadian concert tour dates due to health issues.

The 68-year-old singer shared on Tuesday that the back pain that initially caused her to postpone the first half of her concert tour has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasized to the sacrum. In addition to natural wellness therapies, Newton-John will complete a short course of photon radiation therapy.

"I decided on my direction of therapies after consultation with my doctors and natural therapists and the medical team at my Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia," Newton-John said in a statement.

Newton-John says she is confident she will be back later in the year, better than ever, to celebrate her shows.

The next time you hear anyone dismiss all faith-based films as too heavy-handedly preachy and white-bread squeaky-clean for their taste, point them toward “The Grace of Jake,” a confidently measured and arrestingly low-key tale of redemption in a sleepy Southern hamlet where the citizenry is engagingly ordinary, occasionally profane, and matter-of-factly multicultural. Director-screenwriter Chris Hicky makes a most promising transition from award-winning music videos to indie dramatic features with this Kickstarter-funded labor of love, which he filmed on location in his hometown of Forrest City, Ark. — identified here as Palestine — and cast with a neatly balanced mix of familiar faces, up-and-comers and bit-playing nonprofessionals.

The leisurely paced yet consistently involving narrative focuses primarily on Jake Haynes (Jake La Botz), a taciturn ex-convict and unaccomplished musician who’s introduced while on his way back home to Palestine to see his long-estranged father, Henry (Michael Beck, the erstwhile hunk from “The Warriors

Cynicism isn’t hard to come by in the horror genre; any Italian cannibal or home invasion flick will satiate your desire for an outlook on man’s worst transgressions. Conversely, it’s even harder to find a film with such a buoyant feel that is at odds with the terror on display. Well, folks, may I present to you The Boogens (1981), an endearing charmer of a subterranean monster movie. By the time it’s over, you may want to give it a big old hug.

Released by Jensen Farley Pictures in September (with Paramount buying up the TV rights) on a budget of $600,000 Us, The Boogens did nothing to impress critics. However, a certain Stephen King loved the hell out of it, and his praise would grace the advertising as it did with his accolades of The Evil Dead (1981). (A King blurb held a lot of truck in those days.

Today in 2007, Xanadu opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre, where it ran for 512 performances. Xanadu is a musical comedy with a book by Douglas Carter Beane and music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar, based on the 1980 cult classic film of the same name. The story of the musical focuses on a Greek muse, Clio, who descends from Mt. Olympus to Venice Beach, California, in 1980 on a quest to inspire a struggling artist, Sonny, to achieve the greatest creation of his life - a roller disco. It earned an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical and a Drama Desk Award for Best Book. It was also nominated for Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book.

" Olivia Newton-John's daughter isn't afraid to stand up to internet trolls. Chloe Lattanzi faced major criticism on Thursday when she posted a picture on Instagram of her wearing a cleavage-baring hot pink bikini in a swimming pool. After many commenters apparently claimed that the size of her bustline must somehow be related to the size of her brain (their comments have since been deleted), Lattanzi, 30, took to Instagram to shut down the haters. A photo posted by Chloe Lattanzi (@chloelattanzi) on Jul 7, 2016 at 3:30pm Pdt "Being unashamed of your feminine form makes you strong. It takes strength to accept and love yourself,

Inspired by a double bill of the Village People’s Can’t Stop The Music and Olivia Newton-John’s roller disco disaster Xanadu, the Razzie awards began on Tuesday, March 31, 1981 – the same night as the 53rd Annual Academy Awards.

While Ordinary People was being honored with Best Picture, Razzies founder John Wilson was dis-honoring the Village People’s folly with Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture. He’s been honoring the films that are “so bad they’re wildly entertaining” ever since.

“The acting in these movies isn’t merely wretched,” Wilson notes, “it’s laughable. The writing is deliriously dunderheaded. And the direction sails beyond the mediocre into the stratosphere of meteoric misfires.”

Carly Anderson and Alison Jiear have joined the cast of Xanadu, the new production which will premiere at London’s Southwark Playhouse later this year. The musical, which is receiving its UK premiere, is based on the 1980s movie that starred Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. The film revolved around the story of a girl who makes dreams come true.

Xanadu will debut at the Playhouse on the 6th October and will run until the 21st November. Jiear, who is currently appearing in The 3 Little Pigs at the Palace Theatre, will play Melpomene while Anderson will star as Kia, the role originally played by Newton-John in the film. Anderson is currently in the successful Sunny Afternoon, which is still running at The Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End of London.

Olivia Newton-John hit the red carpet with her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi, over the weekend ... and wow, did the 29-year-old singer look different. Chloe, who made a name for herself when she competed on the VH1 reality show "Rock the Cradle" back in 2008, has been keeping a low profile since she went to rehab in 2013 following a battle with anorexia, cocaine, antidepressants and alcohol. The daughter of the "Grease" star and dancer Matt Latanzi, has been very open about her struggles growing up in the limelight. "Fame totally messes you up. I don’t blame my mother for my problems, but I would never want to be famous or raise a child of my own around the cult of celebrity. It ruins lives," she told the Daily Mail after her rehab stint. "My eating disorder started when I was 15 and carried on until my early 20s. I had anxiety attacks and

When in Vegas... Olivia Newton-John and her 29-year-old daughter Chloe Lattanzi celebrated the 35th anniversary of the film Xanadu as well as the premiere of their music video for the song "You Have to Believe," a remix of Newton-John's 1980 hit, "Magic," on Saturday at Share Nightclub in Sin City. The mother-daughter duo was all smiles as the two posed for pics together on the red carpet before later taking snaps with their significant others, including Newton-John's husband John Easterling and Lattanzi's fiancé James Driskell. Lattanzi left little to the imagination in a very revealing ensemble that consisted of a bondage mini-skirt and...

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